British Efforts Against the Nascent Israeli
State

In a British television interview on December
12, 1971, Mr. Richard Crossman, one of Britain's famous left-wing intellectuals,
a member of the Labour government between 1964 and 1970 and subsequently
editor of the prestigious Socialist weekly The New Statesman, bluntly
accused the former Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister
Ernest Bevin, who presided over the destinies of Britain after World War
II, of having "tried to destroy the Jews of Palestine." Mr. Crossman recalled
that he was intended by Mr. Bevin in 1945 to be one of the instruments
of his policy. He thus discovered first hand what that policy was.

His accusation, with its implication of
a violent British passion against the Jews of Mandated Palestine, must
have startled many well-meaning people who innocently believed that the
conflict over Palestine was a straightforward clash "between Jews and Arabs."
If they knew of Britain’s role in the Mandate period it was as merely an
honest broker caught in the middle. In fact, Mr. Crossman added authoritative
support to those who have long known and insisted that Britain was an active
participant in the dispute, and was indeed the prime driving force in the
resistance to Jewish restoration in Palestine.

In the immediate context of this tells
of the motives and the vital part of successive British governments and
their agents in the creation and perpetuation of the conflict between Jews
and Arabs.

Britain Refused to transfer any functions
to Jewish authorities, even after terminating the Mandate.

The key to this question is reflected in the
behaviour of the British in 1947. When, in that year, the Arabs rejected
the partition of Palestine and refused to set up the projected Arab state,
the British administration, then still governing Palestine under the Mandate,
refused to carry out the recommendations of the United Nations to implement
the partition plan. The British government made it plain that it would
do all in its power to prevent the birth of the Jewish state. Britain announced
that she would not -- and indeed, she did not -- carry out the orderly
transfer of any functions to the Jewish authorities in the interim before
the end of the Mandate on May 15, 1948. Everything was left in a state
of disorder. This was Britain's first contribution to the burden of the
nascent state.

When, immediately after the United Nations
Assembly decision, the Palestinian Arabs launched their preliminary onslaught
on the Jewish community, the British Army gave them considerable cover
and aid. It obstructed Jewish defence on the ground; it blocked the movement
of Jewish reinforcements and supplies to outlying settlements; it opened
the land frontiers for the entry of Arab soldiers from the neighbouring
Arab states; it. maintained a blockade in the Mediterranean and sealed
the coast and ports through which alone the outnumbered Jews could expect
reinforcements; it handed over arms dumps to the Arabs. When Jaffa was
on the point of falling to a Jewish counterattack, it sent in forces from
Malta to bomb and shell the Jewish force. Meanwhile, it continued to supply
the Arab states preparing to invade across the borders with all the arms
they asked for and made no secret of it.

The British government was privy to the
Arab plans for invasion;1 and on every diplomatic
front, and especially in the United Nations and in the United States, it
pursued a vigorous campaign of pressure and obstruction to hinder and prevent
help to the embattled Zionists and to achieve the abandonment of the plan
to set up a Jewish state. When the state was declared nevertheless, the
British government exerted every effort to bring about its defeat by the
invading Arab armies. It was not by chance that one of the last operations
in the war between Israel and the Arab states in January 1949 was the shooting
down on the Sinai front of five British RAF planes that had flown across
the battlelines into Israeli-held territory. This was the culmination of
a policy developed and pursued by the British throughout their administration
of the Mandate -- surely not the least of the great betrayals of the weak
by the strong in the twentieth century.

The policy of Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin,
who was severely criticised, was no more than the logical, if extreme,
evolution of the policies of Anthony Eden, who inspired the creation of
the Arab League in 1945; of Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary who
presided over the declaration of death to Zionism in the White Paper of
1939, and of their predecessors who shaped the "Arab Revolt" of 1936, who
made possible the "disturbances" of 1929, and who were responsible for
the pogrom in Jerusalem in 1920.

Seeds of Arab hostility to Israel & British
Policy

It is impossible and, indeed, pointless and
misleading to explain, analyse, or trace the development of Arab hostility
to Zionism and the origins of Arab claims in Palestine without examining
the policy of the British rulers of the country between 1919 and 1948.

One of the great objects of British diplomacy
as the conflict in Palestine deepened during the Mandate period was to
create the image of Britain as an honest arbiter striving only for the
best for all concerned and for justice. In fact, Britain was an active
participant in the confrontation. She was indeed more than a party. The
Arab "case" in Palestine was a British conception. It took shape and was
given direction by the British Military administration after the First
World War. The release in recent years of even a part of the confidential
official documents of the time has strengthened the long-held suspicion
that the Arab attack on Zionism would never have began had it not been
for British inspiration, tutelage, and guidance.

In the end, it is true, British sympathy,
assistance, and co-operation came to be auxiliary to Arab attitudes and
actions. Those attitudes, however, had their beginnings and their original
motive power as a function of British imperial ambitions and policy. The
two intertwined progressively throughout thirty years, until their open
co-operation after 1939. At the last, in 1947- 1949, they consummated an
imperfectly concealed alliance for the forcible prevention of the establishment
of the Jewish state.

The Sudden Appearance in 1919 of a militant
Arab "movement."

That is the background of the sudden appearance
in 1919 of a militant Arab "movement." In the circumstances of the time,
the British military administration should have invited and ensured the
co-operation of the local population, Moslem and Christian, in implementing
London's policy. What was required was dissemination of clear and concise
information on the vast areas of Arabia and Mesopotamia that had been liberated
by the British and their Allies and were to become Arab or predominantly
Arab states; on the contribution made by the Jews to the liberation of
Palestine, their ancient and unrelinquished homeland; and on the undertaking
made to them in the Balfour Declaration and the safeguards in that declaration
for the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine.
It might have been made clear that the Sherif Hussein had called on the
Moslems to welcome the Jews to Palestine; information should have been
spread about the cordial meetings between Faisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann
and the agreement they had signed; and last but not least, the determination
of the British government to carry out its Zionist policy should have been
confirmed. Such a declaration would without a doubt have created the right
climate for launching that policy. "The military Administration ruled the
country which waited on its very nod," wrote a contemporary observer. "It
would consequently have required the maximum of moral courage, enmity or
external support, deliberately to go in the teeth of the policy of the
Administration -- above all in the Levant where the whole population is
so singularly sensitive to every nuance of tyranny and of intrigue."2

The Balfour Declaration in Palestine is to
be treated "as extremely confidential and is on no account for any publication"

The popularisation of the Jewish National
Home policy was, however, farthest from the minds of the military administration.
For more than two years, it neither published nor allowed the publication
of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. This act of omission was backed
by a specific prohibition from headquarters in Cairo. The Declaration,
wrote the Chief Political Officer to the Chief Administrator in Jerusalem.
on October 9, 1919, "is to be treated as extremely confidential and is
on no account for any publication."3

The group in power in Jerusalem made no
secret of its hostility to Zionism. The whole of its administration, even
down to its social occasions, was permeated with an anti-Jewish atmosphere
that reminded some Jewish observers of the Tsarist regime in Russia. Indeed,
Zeev Jabotinsky, then serving as a lieutenant in the Jewish Legion, which
he had founded, and himself a native of Russia, wrote: "Not in Russia nor
in Poland had had there been seen such an intense and widespread atmosphere
of hatred as prevailed in the British Army in Palestine in 1919 and 1920."4

The measures to prevent Jewish reconstruction
slowly tightened

In Palestine, the measures to confine and
restrict Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened. The British government
was not free to make drastic changes since Britain had no sovereignty in
Palestine. She was there constitutionally to fulfil the Mandate and was
answerable to the League of Nations for her actions. As long as the League
had prestige in the world, it served as a restraining influence on the
deepening tendency in London to turn the purpose of the Mandate from the
"reconstitution of the Jewish National Home" to the creation of an Arab-dominated
dependency of Great Britain. Informed public opinion could not be disregarded,
nor that part of the British establishment that fought back, though ever
less effectively, against the Arabist erosion of its obligation to the
Jewish people.

But while the Colonial Office and the administration
in Palestine reduced the essentials of the Mandate, the League of Nations
grew progressively less effective; its influence waned gradually in the
1920s, speedily after its show of impotence over the Japanese seizure of
Manchuria in 1931. In sum, Zionism was fought on every possible front:
economically, in the social services, in the police and public service.
The administration was so filled with officials hostile to the purpose
of the Mandate that the exceptions became famous. The progress of Jewish
restoration was retarded as much as possible.

The central and most effective, weapon in
the British armoury was the control of immigration

The central and most effective, weapon in
the British armoury was the control of immigration, and this was used with
ever increasing severity. In justification, economics were invoked; a principle
called "economic absorptive capacity" was the guiding criterion. With the
help of "experts" who asserted that there simply was little or no cultivable
land left for development, the government's control of Jewish immigration-administered
by a system of quotas -- became ever more restrictive. (At that time, there
were less than a million people in western Palestine; today there are four
million, with still undefined possibilities of growth.) Through the country's
back door, in quiet defiance of its Mandate, it also allowed an incessant
inflow of Arabs. These came mainly from Syria and Transjordan, attracted
by the progress and prosperity the Jews were bringing to Palestine. In
a constant atmosphere of Jewish crisis and tragedy, in the twenty-six years
of the Mandate period, the British allowed the entry of approximately 400,000
Jews into their national home and hounded and punished and, in the end,
drove back or deported Jews who were trying to steal in. In that same period,
crossing the Jordan with ease, probably 200,000 Arabs came in to swell
the "existing non-Jewish population."5

Yet, though the effort was sustained for
a whole generation, from the early 1920s to 1948, neither the British rulers
nor Haj Amin el Husseini with the machine he had built for propaganda and
indoctrination, ever succeeded in converting the Arab population of Palestine
into a nationally conscious entity, moved and animated by a hunger for
"liberation," proclaiming and asserting itself as a people with a positive
aim. The fundamental reason is that it was -- and is still -- no such thing.
A nation cannot be "created" in a generation or even in two, certainly
not when essential ingredients are lacking. It was difficult to distinguish
an Arab people altogether, not only in Palestine. A sense of fraternal
solidarity
did exist in the Arab family, in its economics, in its sense of honour.
It existed in the clan that might grow out of the individual family. It
might exist in the village. Beyond these loyalties, there was only a religious
sense, a sense of community in Islam. Even that, with the considerable
sectarian fragmentation, never proved itself in modem times as an effective
force. There was little sense of belonging to "Arabdom." To the degree
that such a feeling ultimately did take root, it was expressed by an affinity
to the large Arab people as a whole. Such an affinity could at least refer
back to the ancient glory of a vast Arab Empire. This very frame of reference
emphasised the absence of a "Palestinian" consciousness -- which had in
fact never existed and which could not be conjured up. Whenever, therefore,
a reaction was to be provoked in the more militant, or more unruly, section
of the Arab population, it was the vaguer generality of Islam or of pan-Arabism
that was invoked.

Thus, the disturbances in 1929 were organised
on a religious pretext-the alleged designs of the Zionists on the Moslem
Holy Places and an Arab assertion of Moslem ownership of the Western Wall
(of the Jewish Temple), which abuts the Temple Mount where the Moslems
built their mosques. These disturbances, marked by the resolute permissiveness
of the British authority, were characterised by outbursts of sheer slaughter.
The massacre of the scholarly Jewish community of Hebron remained unreported
elsewhere because of the defence provided by the newly effective Jewish
Haganah organisation.

The "Arab Revolt" of 1936-1939, developed
by British and Arab co-operation into an expression of pan-Arab policy,
was far more ambitious. It was intended-and indeed came to be-the herald
of Britain's final abrogation of her pact with the Jewish people. For between
1929 and 1936, a drastic and dire change had occurred in the world.

If the Jews could proclaim a state, the Arab
population might well make peace with it, and the British presence would
come to an end

The Nazis had come to power in Germany. The
campaign of the German state against the Jewish people in Germany and throughout
the world, the wave of anti-Semitism engulfing the Jews of Eastern Europe
and poisoning the wells of the West, had created an unprecedented pressure
on the gates of their national home. During the three years after 1933,
when the official anti-Jewish terror in Germany began, some 150,000 Jews
had entered Palestine by taking advantage of remaining loopholes in the
immigration regulations. The plight of the Jews remaining in Germany and
of the persecuted, increasingly desperate, five million Jews in Eastern
Europe was arousing considerable international attention. Opening the gates
of Palestine, though the obvious solution, would have meant the defeat
of the Arabists' purpose. A few more years of large-scale Jewish immigration
would have placed the Jews in a majority. If the Jews could proclaim a
state, the Arab population -- for the most part probably prepared to resign
itself to a Jewish regime if it did not interfere with its way of life
-- might well make peace with it, and the British presence would come to
an end. The pressure of Jewish need and world sympathy could be countered
only by a more powerful, irresistible force which would prove that it was
impossible to achieve the Mandates original purpose, that Arab resistance
was too strong, too determined. The Arab "Revolt" was the result.

It was not a revolt at all but a campaign
of violence directed against the Jews. Haj Amin's resources, after fifteen
years of organisation, were adequate to give it a countrywide -- though
still primitive and improvisational-character. In 1920, the pogroms had
been inspired and connived at by the military administration in an effort
to nip its home government's Zionist policy in the bud. In 1936, the Arab
campaign of violence was a move calculated to further the British home
government's intention of finally burying Zionism. The policy laid down
in 1939 in the White Paper was the preordained purpose for which the 1936
outbreak was needed.

The permissive attitude of the Palestine
government to the campaign of violence was evident from the outset. The
outbreak was signalled months in advance. Inciting speeches by Arab political
and religious notables and inflammatory articles in the Arab newspapers
were the order of the day. It was common talk among both Jews and Arabs
that the Arab villages (as in 1920) were "infested with agitators" who
were inciting the population to violence against the Jews and that once
again the people were being assured that a'dowlah ma’ana. This process
was not disturbed by a single overt act, nor by any public statement, nor
any warning of preventive or punitive action by the government.6

When, in the face of this astonishing forbearance,
warnings were addressed to the High Commissioner and to the Colonial Office
in London of the signs of the imminence of Arab violence, the reply was
that the situation was under control. Similar reassuring statements were
made after the first day's toll of seventeen Jews killed by Arab mobs in
the public streets of Jaffa under the nose of the British authority (Katz,
pp. 4-5).

British Troops prevented from controlling
Arab violence

Had the campaign been in fact a spontaneous
Arab outbreak, and had the government been determined to maintain law and
order, the outbreak would have lasted no more than a few days and would
have made little impact. A completely typical illustration of the administration's
solution to the problem of pretending to be putting down the "rebellion"
is provided by the description by a British soldier on the spot, given
in the London journal New Statesman and Nation, September 20, 193 6:At night, when we are guarding the line
against the Arabs who come to blow it up, we often see them at work but
are forbidden to fire at them. We may only fire into the air, and they,
upon hearing the report, make their escape. But do you think we can give
chase? Why, we must go on our hands and knees and find every spent cartridge-case
which must be handed in or woe betide us.In a similar spirit, the general strike proclaimed
by the Arab Higher Committee (the self-appointed leadership of the Arab
community, headed by Haj Amin el Husseini) and imposed on the Arab masses
as the central weapon and symbol of the campaign was not resisted by the
administration. It refused to declare the strike illegal, in flagrant contrast
to its swift crushing of an earlier strike in non-violent protest-by the
Jews against Jabotinsky's arrest after the pogrom of 1920.

When, subsequently, the "rebels," mistaking
British permissiveness for Arab strength, went beyond attacks on Jewish
villages and on Jewish life and property and attacked British personnel,
effective measures were and the "rebels" were firmly suppressed.

The revolt, widely publicised, served its
purpose. British government proclaimed in its famous White Paper of 1939
its abandonment of the Zionist policy. After the introduction of 75,000
more Jews into Palestine during the ensuing five years, the gates would
be closed. The way would thus be open for that ultimate semi-dependent
Arab state that would complete the British pan-Arab dream in the Middle
East.

The British White Paper was was rejected as
inconsistent with the Mandate by the League of Nations, but the League
of Nations was dying

This document was rejected as inconsistent
with the Mandate by the supervising body of the League of Nations, the
Permanent Mandates Commission. But the League of Nations was dying, and
Britain treated it with appropriate contempt. Four months later, the Second
World War broke out; and the British government executed the White Paper
policy as if Palestine had been a British possession and the White Paper
an act of Parliament. Unnumbered Jews thus were trapped in Nazi-occupied
Europe when, but for the rigid and unrelenting application of the provisions
of the White Paper, they could have escaped to Palestine even during the
war.

It may be that this grim consequence of
British policy is the reason why the British government later wilfully
destroyed so 'many of the documents that could have provided direct evidence
of the Palestine government's behaviour. After thirty years, the British
state archives were, in accordance with custom, opened to the research
of writers and historians. The entire correspondence between the Palestine
administration and its chiefs at the Colonial Office in London relating
to the records of the meetings of the Executive Council (in effect the
Cabinet) of the Palestine government had been "destroyed under statute."
Another obviously important file so destroyed was that relating to the
Haganah organisation, which, if it had not been hamstrung by the government,
was itself capable of putting a swift end to the Arab attacks. Yet another
file destroyed was on "Propaganda Among the Arabs" -- the incitement against
the Jews-which the Palestine government had often been charged with inspiring,
sponsoring, or at least facilitating.7

The British Government later destroyed records
of it's Palestine Government

The sanctity of the minutes of the British
Cabinet in London has, however, saved one item of direct documentary evidence
on the British government's relationship to the "revolt" and to the "rebels."
The disturbances were not even mentioned when the Cabinet met soon after
they broke out. Nor was the outbreak discussed at the next meeting or the
one after that. Indeed, five meetings went by before the Cabinet discussed
any aspect of the situation in Palestine. At the meeting of May 11, 1936-three
weeks and a day after the Outbreak -- the Secretary of State for the Colonies
presented the Cabinet with a memorandum, not indeed proposing or even announcing
measures for putting an end to the violence, but reporting thatthe High Commissioner recommended that
the most helpful means now open to His Majesty's Government of preventing
the present disorders from spreading and increasing in violence would be
for an immediate announcement of a Royal Commission with wide terms of
reference, with power to make recommendations for lessening animosities
and for establishing a feeling of lasting security in Palestine. [Cab.
23/84]The Secretary of State "did not," the minutes
continue, "ask for a decision on the Terms of Reference to, or composition
of the proposed Royal Commission which would require careful consideration,
but merely for permission to tell the High Commissioner that His Majesty's
Government was favourable to the proposal so that he could sound the
Arabs and report further" (italics added).

Nevertheless, in spite of this collusion,
the development of the "revolt" was made possible and given shape and thrust
only by the introduction of help by Arabs from outside Palestine. One of
the outstanding features of the "revolt" was the failure of the Arabs of
Palestine themselves to act appropriately.

British Collusion and the Arab apathy to the
Mufti's Incitement

The Palestinian Arabs were comfortably aware
of the existence around them, in addition to their original homeland in
Arabia, of six more Arabic-speaking countries, five of them predominantly
Moslem, all part of the same sprawling territory which many centuries ago
had been won and lost by the invaders from Arabia. Those Arabs who had
dealings with the Jews got on well with them, and even if they did not
like the idea of Jews, rather than Turks or British, ruling the country,
they could not conjure up enough hostility to fight them. In 1929, the
Mufti had incited them by distributing postcards which showed the El Aksa
Mosque flying the Zionist the flag -- an effective essay in photomontage.
In 1936, the bulk of Palestinian Arabs still remained cold to the urgings
of Haj Amin. A minority carried out the street knifings, the sniping at
Jewish transport, the throwing of bombs in cinemas and marketplaces. The
general strike was maintained only by the constant threat of force by the
Mufti's organisation; and the threat was made more persuasive by the refusal
of the administration to declare the strike illegal.

The effort of the Palestine Arabs was not
enough to impress the world. After the first phase of sniping, of attacks
by street mobs, of individual bomb throwing, of shooting at transport on
the main roads, there came a relaxation even of this effort. "Rebels" were
consequently imported. A Syrian, Fawzi Kaukji, led a mixed band of Syrian
and Iraqi mercenaries in the extended campaign directed mainly against
the Jewish villages.8 The Palestine Arab population
on the whole refused to co-operate with these liberators, often even denying
them shelter. The outcome was a campaign of murder against the Palestinian
Arabs. When Arab villages appealed to the British administration for arms
to defend themselves against Kaukji's invading bands, they were refused.
In the end, more Arabs than Jews were killed by the rebels.9

The intervention by Arabs from the neighbouring
countries was a reflection of the Cairo school's dream. To its members,
Palestine was only part of the larger scheme; it was needed only to complete
the homogeneity of a large Arab "world" under British tutelage. That dream
was not abandoned. Indeed, the British government worked energetically
to create a form of unity, or at least a framework of co-operation, among
the Arab states. In an Arab world riven with disagreements and jealousies,
the Palestine issue was the ideal instrument to bring about such co-operation.
To appear, without much effort, as the champions of their brothers in Palestine
and at the same time to nourish the hope that the Fertile Crescent might
become homogeneously Arab -- this was a prospect that appealed to the Arab
states.

As early as 1936, the real or nominal heads
of the Arab states or states in embryo were called in by the administration
and generously agreed to "secure" from the Mufti and his Arab Higher Committee
a temporary cessation of the revolt so as to enable an investigation of
grievances. When the Mufti in turn graciously consented, the government
permitted the main body of Fawzi Kaukji's terrorists to go back across
the Jordan, where they could rest and reorganise. Thereafter, it became
a self-understood facet of British policy that the Arab states had acquired
a right to intervene in the affairs of Palestine. As though they were parties
to the "dispute," with a claim and interests in the country-and in flagrant
flaunting of the origin, the concept, the letter and the spirit of Britain's
own defined Mandate -- the Arab rulers were invited in 1939 to a so-called
Round Table Conference. The predetermined failure of this conference (where
the Arab representatives refused to meet the Jews face to face) was enshrined
in the White Paper that followed immediately.

The British Creation of the Arab League to
serve as the mouthpiece of a British sponsored Pan-Arab dream

Looking ahead, through the storms of the war
that followed to the final consummation of the White Paper, the British
government took active steps to create A formal instrument of pan-Arabism.
Thus, the Arab League was born. After Anthony Eden first mentioned It publicly
in 1941, the then British Foreign Secretary presided over the necessary
diplomatic exchanges and negotiations that brought about the formal establishment
of the League in 1945. The pan-Arab dream had meanwhile also assumed that
large economic importance which had been part of its inspiration. The oil-fields
of Iraq proved to be but a small portion of a vast potential in Iraq itself
and, even more, in Saudi Arabia and the British dependent sheikhdoms on
the Persian Gulf. British commercial interests played a large part in their
exploitation.

Thus, after thirty years, an Arab entity
consisting of seven countries -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi
Arabia, and Transjordan -- formally independent, semi-dependent, or on
the way to formal independence and providing substantial dividends to an
impoverished British economy, promised to realise the dream, conceived
in 1915, of an Arab confederation that would "look to Britain as its patron
and protector." Western Palestine was still lacking to complete the picture,
but its inclusion seemed imminent. It remained only to give the finishing
stroke to Zionism. That should not be difficult after the battering the
Jewish people had suffered from the Nazis.

A Jewish Homeland with a Jewish Majority was
an obstacle

From the very outset of the new Pan-Arab-British
imperial phase, however that prospect was scarred by one intrusion: Zionism
striving for the Jewish restoration of Palestine. The member states of
the Arab League, which was formed in 1945 to supply the beginnings of co-ordinated
modern Arabic power, were led by the British to be believe that the Prospect
of a Jewish state in Palestine had been finally erased by the White Paper
of 1939. Accordingly, they announced their acceptance of the White Paper-which
also recognised the rights of the Jews to minority existence. They were
accorded an immediate earnest of British loyalty to the compact: That same
year the British, efficiently and unceremoniously, finally forced the French
out of Syria. The Arabs looked forward to the equally effective end to
snuffing out of the Jewish restoration in Palestine.

The refusal of the Jews to submit to the
British dictate, their underground struggle which, to the Arabs' surprise
and dismay, resulted in the relinquishment of British Power in Palestine,
consequently ruled out the transfer of sovereignty (which the British did
not legally possess) to the Arabs. Encouraged, and armed, by the British,
the Arabs rejected even the partition compromise of 1947, rejecting Zionist
pleas for co-operation. If they were to eliminate the Zionists and to prevent
the rebirth of the Jewish state they had now themselves to go to war, under
strikingly' favourable circumstances.

Then, precisely at the beginning of the
new and so promisingly brilliant era in Arab nationalism, at the very rebirth
of the empire, the Arab states suffered one of the greatest shocks, in
all Arab history.

In May 1948, they launched the war against
the embryonic Jewish state with considerable reason for confidence. The
total Jewish population numbered no more than 650,000. Israel's armed force
had for the most part had no more than partisan training. She had no air
force at all.10 She had just passed through
years of strain and tension and a bitter struggle with the British. When
the invasion by the Arab states opened, she had been under guerrilla attack
for six months by Palestinian Arabs and by advance units from the armies
of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, aided in a hundred ways by the still ubiquitous
British. (The British civilian administration evacuated by May 14, 1948.
The British Army began to organise its evacuation well after that date,
completing the process on August 1.) While the British had opened the land
frontiers so that men and arms could pour in from the neighbouring Arab
countries,11 they had refused to open a port
for the Jews as recommended by the United Nations; and they maintained
their blockade in the Mediterranean to prevent any reinforcements from
reaching Israel. The United States bad announced an embargo and enforced
it strictly, so that the Jews were deprived of that source as well.

In addition to these advantages, the Arabs
were given massive material support by the British government, which openly
provided arms and ammunition for the war (and turned aside criticism at
the United Nations that Britain was aiding aggressive invasion by the claim
that the State of Israel did not legally exist and could not therefore
be invaded). The Arabs further enjoyed expert British leadership; the Transjordanian
Arab Legion was officered by British soldiers.

British co-operated in planning at least some
phases of the war against the Jewish State

Unknown to the world at the time, the British
co-operated in planning at least some phases of the war. On January 15,
1948-the day a new treaty with Iraq was signed at Portsmouth-the British
Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, reached an agreement with the Iraqi leaders,
Prime Minister Saleh Jabr, Foreign Minister Fadil el Jamali, and the elder
statesman, then President of the Senate, Nuri el Said. By this agreement,
the British undertook to speed up the supply of weapons and ammunition
ordered from the British government and to supply automatic weapons sufficient
for "50,000 policemen." The purpose was to arm the Palestinian Arab fighters
to enable them to participate in the liberation of Palestine.12
A third point in the agreement was that Iraqi forces would enter every
area evacuated by British troops in the whole of Palestine, so that a Jewish
state would not be formed.13 So much for Iraq.
Six weeks later Bevin, at an interview with the Prime Minister of Transjordan
attended by General Glubb (the Commander of the Arab Legion), approved
the plan of Transjordan to do her share in frustrating the partition plan
by invading and occupying the area allotted in the United Nations resolution
to the establishment of an Arab state-14 Superiority
in numbers, overwhelming superiority in arms and ammunition, the eager
and substantial help of a major world power, a strategy based on a converging
movement on three fronts against a Jewish force largely untrained, poorly
armed and defending a small but densely populated coastal strip-these were
surely enough to assure victory and even the slaughter that Arab leaders
openly promised.

1. See Elie
Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies
(London, 1970), pp. 231-233.

4. The Story
of the Jewish Legion (New York, 1945), p. 171. Jabotinsky's book contains
(pp. 168-77) a description of the policy and motives of the military administration
in 1919 and 1920. More detail still is in Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle
East Diary 1917-1956 (London, 1959); Horace B. Samuel, Unholy Memories
of the Holy Land. See also Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949).

5. See the
report of the Royal Commission on Palestine (HM. Stationery Office, 1937).
Also Y. Shimoni, Arviyei Eretz Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1947); the UNRWA Review,
inf. Paper No. 6 (September, 1952) on Megal Arab immigration during the
Second World War.

6. A description
of the developing situation three months before the outbreak began is contained
in Samuel Katz, Days of Fire (London, 1968), pp. 3-4.

7. Files
CO 793/27/75269; CO 793/27/75402; and CO 793/27/75528/25.

8. Colonial
Office files of correspondence on the "Participation an Arabs" in the Disturbances
(CO 793/27/75528/48), and "Activities of Fawzi Kauldi" (CO 793/27/75528/82)
have been "Destroyed Under Statute."

9. A critical
detailed analysis, legal and administrative, of the British measures during
the first phase of the 1936 revolt is given in Horace B. Samuel, Revolt
by Leave (London, 1937). For a comprehensive picture and summing up, see
Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949), and Katz, Days of Fire
(London, 1968).

10. Four
fighter Planes were later scraped together and they brought about a turning
point in the war by halting the Egyptian advance at Ashdod.

11. The
British themselves announced (in the House of Commons) at the end of February
that 5,000 Arabs from the neighbouring countries had entered Palestine
in the preceding three months.

12. This
was a wildly optimistic estimate. The Iraqis later discovered that the
total number of Palestinian Arabs taking part in the fighting was 4,000.

13. See
Kedouri, The Chatham House Version, pp. 212-233, quoting Iraqi historian
Abd-al-Razzaq al Hosani. The scheme, according to Jamali, was dropped when
the Portsmouth Treaty was revoked.

14. J. B.
Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London, 1957), pp. 63-66.

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